Perhaps the most naive statement of the young century was expressed in Judge Richard Goldstone’s recent mea culpa, printed in the Washington Post. The South African jurist headed a commission to investigate human rights violations during the Gaza war of 2008–09. The 2010 Goldstone Report, as it came to be known, accused Israel of crimes against civilians. “If I had known then what I know now,” the judge allows, “the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.”

How different? Well, for one thing it might have told the truth. Neither Israel nor Hamas cooperated with Goldstone’s investigators, but Israel conducted its own probe, while Hamas was only interested in manipulating the judge and the international press—which constituted the jury. They were only too happy to oblige. (UN INQUIRY SEES GAZA WAR CRIMES; ISRAEL CHASTISED, the New York Times; ISRAEL COMMITTED WAR CRIMES IN GAZA: UN PROBE CHIEF, Agence France-Presse; UN SAYS ISRAEL SHOULD FACE WAR-CRIMES TRIAL OVER GAZA, the Independent, London.) Hamas officials, beside themselves with delight, repeatedly chortled that Goldstone was Jewish; ergo, how could he be biased against the Jewish state?

In fact he could be and was...

One wonders what's behind Goldstone's sudden about face? He claims it's his newfound clarity, but I suspect it may be as simple as a good old fashioned case of the Jewish guilts to which not even Jewish dupes of Jewry's enemies are always and necessarily immune.